Ontwerp voor een venster met een wapenschild en twee staande figuren 1900 - 1903

Antoon Derkinderen made this design for a window with a coat of arms and two standing figures with pencil. It's a really interesting piece because it shows us the nuts and bolts of how an artist thinks. Looking at the texture of the paper, the almost translucent quality of the pencil marks, I’m reminded that art is as much about process as it is about the final image. The lines are tentative, exploratory - you can almost feel Derkinderen working through his ideas, changing his mind. The lion in the coat of arms, for example, is rendered with a kind of confident simplicity, but still, you can see the ghost of earlier marks beneath it. This reminds me of some of Philip Guston's more cartoony images. Both he and Derkinderen embrace a certain level of imperfection. It's in that imperfection, that raw, unfiltered thought process, that the real magic lies. Art isn't about perfection, it's about the conversation.